Something New vs More of the Same

by Joe B on September 9, 2011

Does your product or service offer something different from your competition’s? I mean, besides the fact that you do it better than your competition.

When the iPhone first came out, I wanted one for the simple reason that when I wanted to hear my messages, it allowed me to select the message I wanted to hear. I didn’t have to listen to five messages before I got to the one I really needed to hear. I get a lot of calls when I am in meetings and people leave me messages – some more important than others. Usually, the less important the message, the longer the message. It always seemed that to get to the important message, I had to listen to five minutes of less important messages. So the iPhone was a game changer for me and I was willing to pay the price.

Is your product or service a game changer for your customers? Are your customers looking for a game changer? I am sure there are a lot of cell phone users who couldn’t care less about the iPhone’s messaging feature, or if they did, the feature was not enough to justify the price for them.

People looking for ‘more of the same’ aren’t actively looking. While there may be a lot of them, they’re satisfied with what they’ve got, which means they’re hard to attract. No, the real opportunity is in reaching out to the dissatisfied, to those in search of something new.

Does your product or service offer something new or is it just more of the same?